Featured Gen 6 Prius engine will be a “game changer,” achieve a 53% thermal efficiency

Are you missing the fact that residential electricity usage is about 20% of all electricity usage in the US?

Mike

 

On my recent road trip out west, I experimented with some of those speed limits (I don't think I saw a posted 85, but I did see 80 in a couple states).

It was fun, but I noticed on the consumption bar graph I was cutting my MPG about in half. So I mostly did true 55 to 60, so that I would not have to double my fuel budget for the trip.

On most of those roads, traffic was light enough nobody even cared. Somebody "coming up on me" could see they were coming up on me for about 5 miles, and went right by me in the passing lane, and didn't even bother rolling coal.

I did a lot of the trip on two-lanes (like US 20), but passing was just as easy there because hardly ever was there any oncoming traffic. All of the passing was routine and nonconfrontational.

When I get into a more-congested area, I do think more about matching others' typical speeds. Out in the wide open where passing is super easy, it really wasn't ever an issue.

 

Im going to guess the other is for industrial, in which case you can bet everything else will get expensive as well as a result. But even at 1/5th, if 2.5% of EVs rise by 10x to 25% of registered vehicles, thats very significant. If housing is 20%, and EV is 5x of that, thats 100% increase.

20% housing
80% all else
100% EVs (hypothetically 25% of all vehicles registered)

So 200% in total demand, which turns to doubling the price IF supply does not increase. (Also not factoring future inflation, the real number will be a lot higher if we did). Electricity used to be .13 cents in 2020, now its .16 cents. Per KWH. Nothing changed, just inflation. If we had 200% demand today, it would be .30 cents.

It would cost less for 10gal for a car at 50mpg (500mile range) than to charge an EV. Gas being $3/gal. 10x3= $30. EVs get 3 mile per 1kwh, so 500 miles /3= 166x .30= $50. Right now its $25 only slightly cheaper than prius but almost insignificant.

And i dont think gas prices will go up if people switch from gas to electricity. It just means either gas will be used elsewhere (to produce electricity), or jobs will decrease and supply will scale down to meet demand. Im not worried about gas, im worried about government intervention and meddling in it. Thats what will push gas costs up.

 

Am I the only one who thinks that since new cars are a small portion of cars being used and being sold, with the average car life being some 15 years now, that it wouldn't be that quick of a change if 100% of all new vehicles sold in a country like the USA were EV? It still would take some 15 years for nearly all vehicles to become EV's.

 

Why in the world would EVs consume 5x that of residential housing.

You yourself stated:

This number is far closer to the actual use of EVs.

Using your numbers from earlier in this thread and the total electricity use and capacity posted earlier.

Total capacity 9000 TWh (annually)
Total use. 4000 TWh (annually)
Residential use: 800 TWh (annually).

So if we assume 2.5 cars/household and all of them switched to EVs, that increases residential use by 2.5X50% or 125%.
125% of 800 TWh is 1000TWh.
Add that to the original 800 TWh and you get 1800TWh.

This brings total electricity use to 5000TWh which is still much less than grid capacity.

Now, upgrades to infrastructure will be required. Mainly along the lines of local transformers.
Some areas need desperate help today and some areas willl likely continue to need help, but not due to EVs.

 

Somehow, I don't think grid problems in places like Texas are due to EVs.

 

Although it's Econ 101 that supply and demand interact to determine prices, it's also Econ 101 that the actual shapes of the supply and demand curves for any given commodity can't just be pulled out of the air but have to be worked out from observations (or some kind of very in-the-weeds sector-specific analysis, or both).

To say that doubled demand corresponds to doubled price is to assume that the shape of the supply curve is a straight line with slope 1. I don't know how often anybody assumes that's the shape of the supply curve for anything.

 

Used to be someone here would always say MPG is wrong metric, should look at GPM.
Then the change from 50 to 75 is not as important as the 25 to 50 MPG. But still if 75 is real world, that implies quite a big deal across the models RAV4 Sienna etc. Bodes well for keeping hybrids around at least for my lifetime which is not saying too much.

 

Sounds like Gallons Per Minute to me.

Otherwise, I wonder why that person didn't know that all calculators can do:
1 / MPG = GPM.

 

Because an increase from 2.5% to 25% is an increase of 10x, so i halved that because it consumes half of what housing does. Making it 5x.

Thats assuming its only 25%. 100% of EVs on road isnt going to be a reality anytime soon, but for perspective, it would be a factor of 20x.

And i dont see it going to 25% until like year 2035 at the earliest if i had to guess. But the way EVs are going, i think itll be failed tech that people will ditch naturally once rational people take control of the government. Hybrid is more of the future.

 

Could be, I actually forget the exact metric...you know what they say memory us the first thing to go...or is it second thing?

 

Thank you, at least I see how you came up with that number.

Where you made the error was here:

You added the increase ratio (of EVs to residential consumption) to 100% of consumption.

IF we have 2.5% EVs on the road and they use half of a households electricity that is 2.5% X 20%(residential use) X 150%(increased use due to EV) = 0.75% increase in total use.

IF that 2.5% grows to 25% you then have 25% X 20% X 150% = 7.5% increase in total grid usage.

This is still much less than spare grid capacity today.

You are welcome to have a personal dislike for EVs or their future.
But you math is rather tortured and formulated incorrectly.

 

Lest we forget - The natural resource, "fossil fuels" only go so far, yet it's the primary source for transportation as well as electrification. Since electricity is more efficient, our carbon based resources last longer - the more we use it for electrification .... regardless of infrastructure / maintenance / growth requirements. Never mind that it's easier to filter pollutants from a power generation source vs 100's of millions of autos/trucks/leaf blowers etc.

 

Nissan ad campaign pretty much captured the humor of relying on too much gas in original commercial;

.

 

Econ 101 is more than *just* supply and demand though.

And when it comes to electricity, its a utility rather than a commodity. The price driver is the commodities underpinning the production, maintenance, and development of electricity and the electrical grid.

If a person's grid is largely powered by hydro electric and nuclear power, and the grid is maintained sufficiently, then the only thing that you need more of when electricity demand grows is more output. If these plants aren't operating at full capacity, they just need to up their output. Or if they have excess capacity that they sell down-stream to other jurisdictions, they just don't sell as much of that excess capacity forward.

Its going to be regional, how much prices go up. Places with excess capacity won't increase their rates much at all. Places with insufficient capacity will - but only as much as is required, for public utilities anyway, as is required to increase power generation capacity. If that means a small nuclear reactor, then that would be expensive. But it would be heavily subsidized by tax revenues, so it would be paid over decades and fractions of a percent of additional tax to all. It wouldn't be reflected in electricity rates.

And if there's significant excess capacity at night, or available capacity at night with minimal input cost on labour and oversight can be achieved by spooling up more production - then they make charging at night more enticing which means daytime rates don't need to go up much at all.

Supply/demand isn't so simple

 

It seems to me we are agreeing, at the end of all that, that to assume electricity's supply curve is a straight line with slope 1 would be too simplistic.

 

The thing is you can't always predetermine the outcome. With supply and demand there can be times that too much supply is made because those in charge thought there would be more demand than what ends up happening. A lot of times it's not a production-limit problem, it's a trying-to-determine-how-much-to-make problem.

 

Actually, places that have excess capacity now will become more efficient if night time usage goes up due to EV charging. And the utilities will incentivise this with somewhat lower prices. This could lead to lower electricity prices in places where the PUC sets the rates based on a profit percentage. Of course inflation and other factors will probably erase this, but the net effect could be lower increases compares to other locations

Mike

 

A factor in some things, but not something that happens with base load electricity. It is made to the demand.

It is something that can happen with solar and wind. Peak production doesn't line up with peak demand. Without a storage system, it might be possible to send it elsewhere on a connected grid. That could then help lower the prices elsewhere.

The places without excess can influence the price if they can buy from those that have it.

 

I forgot that EVs would also included in the 80% other category, my bad. Percentages can get a bit confusing than just solid numbers and data. Ill have to step back and redo my math.

Plus, I dont hate EVs, on the contrary, i like all types of mechanical systems. I might be biased, in the way that EVs are inconvenient for range, too long of refilling time, costly, hard to troubleshoot, dont survive test of time like an ICE would, and not very many places you can charge them.
I do acknowledge they have their pros, like i could charge one overnight at home. Or accelerate faster than ICE cars because of electric motor.

But, as of now, they are not something i would buy simply because the battery chemistry is not there. If it was improved to go over 500 miles, cost similar to ICE, last at least 10 years or more, and can charge in less than 5 minutes, id buy one tomorrow. Prius is the closest thing you can get to all the perks of an EV with none of the downsides of an EV. And i love it.